SCO sets up website to rival Groklaw

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 13 Oct 2004 at 16:46

Litigious Unix company SCO is to start up its own website in opposition to Groklaw.

Groklaw is an online repository of legal information and commentary on SCO's controversial campaigns to licence its IP to Linux users and legal attacks against IBM and others, set up by paralegal Pamela Jones.

Launched shortly after SCO announced its billion dollar suit against IBM and what it claimed were its illegal contributions to Linux, the site quickly grew into a focal point for the Open Source community as it rallied round, sizing up the strength of SCO's position and undertaking painstaking research in defence of Open Source software. Indeed IBM's legal team used evidence unearthed by Groklaw contributors in its defence.

Now SCO is hoping to do the same. Speaking at the Etre conference in Cannes yesterday, SCO's president and CEO, Darl McBride said that he intends to launch a counter site: Prosco.net; this will solve the ongoing problem that 'if ever there was anyone who wanted to be provided with updates on how things are progressing with regard to the litigation on various fronts, there was never really a site they could go and hear SCO's side of the story,' he said.

Prior to this, the only place the SCO community could find out SCO's side of the story was from McBride himself. Aside from a brief period when investor group Baystar threatened to pull out its shares unless high level execs communicated in a more 'sensible, businesslike fashion,', McBride had been very active delivering executive speeches, open letters and conference calls extolling SCO's case and portraying the Open Source community as a harbourer of 'counter-cultural ideals' and labelling the GPL licence which governs Open Source software as violating the US Constitution.

But with Baystar having converted its stake to common stock and busily selling it off, McBride was back in full force at the Etre conference, describing intellectual property as 'the new gold', and warning that in the IP Gold Rush, the Open Source community is out to get it. He urged providers of proprietary software to shore up their intellectual property against 'hurricane Linux'.

SCO's Prosco.net site will launch in November and offer a calendar of events and legal documents for SCO's ongoing cases between IBM, Novell, Red Hat and Autozone.